sound,
  Her cheek did catch the colour of her words,
  I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear;
  My heart paused,—­my raised eyelids would not fall,
  But still I kept my eyes upon the sky. 
  I seem’d the only part of Time stood still,
  And saw the motion of all other things;
  While her words, syllable by syllable,
  Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear
  Fell, and I wish’d, yet wish’d her not to speak,
  But she spoke on, for I did name no wish. 
  What marvel my Camilla told me all
  Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love,
  ‘Perchance’ she said ‘return’d.’  Even then the stars
  Did tremble in their stations as I gazed;
  But she spake on, for I did name no wish,
  No wish—­no hope.  Hope was not wholly dead,
  But breathing hard at the approach of Death,
  Updrawn in expectation of her change—­
  Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine
  No longer in the dearest use of mine—­
  The written secrets of her inmost soul
  Lay like an open scroll before my view,
  And my eyes read, they read aright, her heart
  Was Lionel’s:  it seem’d as tho’ a link
  Of some light chain within my inmost frame
  Was riven in twain:  that life I heeded not
  Flow’d from me, and the darkness of the grave,
  The darkness of the grave and utter night,
  Did swallow up my vision:  at her feet,
  Even the feet of her I loved, I fell,
  Smit with exceeding sorrow unto death.

  Then had the earth beneath me yawning given
  Sign of convulsion; and tho’ horrid rifts
  Sent up the moaning of unhappy spirits
  Imprison’d in her centre, with the heat
  Of their infolding element; had the angels,
  The watchers at heaven’s gate, push’d them apart,
  And from the golden threshold had down-roll’d
  Their heaviest thunder, I had lain as still,
  And blind and motionless as then I lay! 
  White as quench’d ashes, cold as were the hopes
  Of my lorn love!  What happy air shall woo
  The wither’d leaf fall’n in the woods, or blasted
  Upon this bough? a lightning stroke had come
  Even from that Heaven in whose light I bloom’d
  And taken away the greenness of my life,
  The blossom and the fragrance.  Who was cursed
  But I? who miserable but I? even Misery
  Forgot herself in that extreme distress,
  And with the overdoing of her part
  Did fall away into oblivion. 
  The night in pity took away my day
  Because my grief as yet was newly born,
  Of too weak eyes to look upon the light,
  And with the hasty notice of the ear,
  Frail life was startled from the tender love
  Of him she brooded over.  Would I had lain
  Until the pleached ivy tress had wound
  Round my worn limbs, and the wild briar had driven
  Its knotted thorns thro’ my unpaining brows
  Leaning its roses on my faded eyes. 
  The wind had blown above me, and the rain